The Meaning of Love
by this.war.within.me
Summary: A story mainly centered around Alice and Jasper's experience behind the scenes while the books/movie focused on Edward/Bella, but not A/J's meeting. Some events from the movie.
1. The Soldier at School

Jasper stepped through the classroom door. He watched the humans spill down the hallway, talking and laughing, indifferent to his existence, and felt the fingers on his right hand, covered in scars, curl into a fist.

He tossed his head, disgusted by their lack of discipline. He could not switch off his military training, and high school was no army camp. Teenagers were a chaotic bunch who had no use for rules--they enjoyed bending them to breaking point but stopped before they were actually in the wrong. It was obvious they did not respect their superiors, barely acknowledging a teacher who directly addressed them.

Not that he wanted them to be disciplined. No, he had much better uses for them. As he thought about it, his fingernails bit into the flesh of his palm, but he didn't notice. All he noticed was the thirst that began to sweep over him, all he noticed was how… delicious each human looked, ignorant of his thoughts, their backs turned to him--vulnerable.

Smaller, slender fingers closed around his fist, and he jerked his head to the right, knowing who it was. He could feel her wedding band pressing against his knuckles. An immediate sense of embarrassment snaked through his abdomen as his muscles went slack, but he was quick to crush it with a rock-hard self-righteousness. Her fingers wove themselves through his, grasping his hand with a tight squeeze. Guilt laced itself through the veins in his arms.

Their eyes met.

Hers were bright, optimistic, trusting.

His were layered with shadow, the dark spots shying away from her light.

Smiling to show her confidence in him, she gave his arm a small tug.

They walked forward as one.

- -

Soon, they fell in behind Emmet and Rosalie. As they neared the cafeteria, the scent of humanity grew, burning in Jasper's throat. Rippling in the air around him, his tension moved like waves of heat. The distraction blazed, hot as coals underfoot.

Alice grabbed his attention by lifting his arm, as if in a dance, and turning below it, then allowing their hands to fall back to the space between them. But the cool sea breeze of her body beside his did not extinguish the fire, and anyone could see the sharp lines the jutting bone of his jaw made.

The entrance was the hardest part. Once he was sitting down next to her, he could turn his chair so he faced nothing but her white, opaque face, her eyes, sparkling jewels tucked under bashful bangs, the curve of her lips, like the rounded edge of a strawberry--and he could focus on the yearning to bite, bite deep into the fruit.

She knew it, too. Knew she was the only thing he focused on during lunch. Edward knew also--resented him for it--and maybe the others did as well, but the walnut-brained humans likely thought he was staring out the window.

Idiots. Warm-blooded idiots.


	2. Later: Alice's Vision

Alice sat up.

Jasper stirred from his position on the bed, draping his gaze across her back. She was stiff. That meant a vision. Jasper settled against the pillows to wait it out. His eyes swept the room, over the shelves and desk and the half-open closet door, then wandered to the window, following the moonlight that rolled over the edge and into the room, studying the way it poured, pale as milk, over the bare skin of her shoulder, down the gentle slope of her back. His hand lifted of its own accord, and he traced the perfect shape in the still air.

The Cullen house was silent. Outside, the wood was silent too, as if it knew Alice was lost in the future and awaited the result. Jasper titled his head back, thoughts meandering like strands of her hair, full of feathery shadow. Tomorrow, or maybe today--Jasper couldn't say for certain because there wasn't a clock nearby--there would be a discussion about To Kill a Mockingbird in his English Lit Class. He'd been alive when it was written though he'd never read it. He'd been too busy with… things.

He wondered what lame conclusions the teenagers would come to about it, those stupid, warm-blooded, juicy--Jasper jerked his head down, cutting off that train of thought before images could begin to form. Thinking about what you couldn't have only made you that much more likely to take it. He shifted in the bed, careful not to disturb Alice, but she was already beginning to move.

Her back straightened, the muscles tightening, and he forgot all about the human teenagers. She stretched; he savored every variation in the texture of her skin. Her head turned, so that she was glancing over her shoulder, and she said, "Edward has decided he's in love."

Jasper felt the desire to laugh bubbling up within him. The corners of his lips curled in opposite directions as he suppressed the sensation. But Alice was not laughing.

She half-turned towards him, her back ablaze in white, her chest dark, and said, "It's so… confusing," she said. "I can't tell whether to be frightened or excited." Her emotions were indeed in turmoil.

His fingers twitched, and he no longer had to try not to laugh. If his Alice was in turmoil, that meant she needed him.

She moved across the bed, and onto his body, resting her hands on his chest, eyes level with his.

For awhile, she just gazed at him.

He felt her love, mixed with a new uncertainty. His hand brushed up her leg, gliding along her skin, running over the dips and ridges in her spine.

"He's in love with a human."

His hand froze. The word shattered the barrier he'd just erected and everything came flooding into his mind, shades of scarlet overtaking his brain, hunger sharpening to a point--his body tensed.

"Jasper," Alice breathed, the distance between their faces gone, her nose pressed against his cheek, her lips at his.

He went slack, closing his eyes, and everything vanished except for the feeling of his hands pressing against the smooth dip of her back, the touch of her skin against his chest, and the feel of her hands on his face, stroking and caressing. Her bangs like feathers, brushing against his forehead.

She pressed one more kiss to his lips, then shifted, laying her head against his chest. "It'll be okay," she whispered.

He didn't know which of them it was meant to reassure.

- -

The next morning, Edward, Alice, and Jasper engaged in a wordless conversation with their eyes while the other vampires chatted before school. Nothing was said aloud about the vision.

The Lit discussion was as boring as he'd thought it would be. The kids didn't know anything about the time period or the people that had lived back then. Jasper had been there; he understood the prejudice, the racism. These children wondered why couldn't everyone just be friends.

Alice would tell him that he couldn't really blame them, after all they were just mortals, but Jasper could and did. He blamed them for everything. To think Edward would stoop so low as to _love _one of them… Jasper shook his head in disgust.

"What's that, Mister Whitlock? You disagree with what Sarah said about Atticus and Aunt Alexandra?"

Jasper looked up in confusion--nobody used his last name unless they were addressing him in military fashion, as Major Whitlock; who was this Sarah? He frowned, and shook his head again. He felt stares, and curiosity, followed by the swift poison of his own thirst, ever present, gnawing away in the darkest part of him.

Lunchtime couldn't come soon enough. He needed Alice--her certainty, her trust, her elegance… and her beauty didn't hurt, either. He saw her coming out of her classroom and already felt better. She glided down the hallway to him, with that smile of hers, and grasped his hand, anchoring him, calming him; loving him.

Why did she love him so much? He often used the question on days when he thought that he might loose control. At present, it was enough to be at her side.

-

Finally, the torture of school was over and they were going home.

When they got there Jasper went down to the basement. It smelled like laundry and moss down there, and it always helped him to get rid of the smell of human.

After about fifteen minutes when he stood up, he heard Alice on wooden stairs. She always knew when he was ready to come back.

She paused on the last step.

He smiled. She was still shorter than him.


	3. Meeting Bella Movie Scene

Alice dropped from the tree branch to the floor, Jasper close at her heels.

"Hi Bella," she said, skipping up a step, "I'm Alice."

Jasper followed her like a shadow follows a beam of light, but paused near Rosalie as Alice actually hugged the human.

The hug lasted seconds, as did Jasper's alarm. She was soon anchored to him again.

"Oh, you do smell good."

Now Alice smelled good, too…

"Alice, what are you--" Edward said.

Jasper frowned as the emotions in the room boiled around him, as his thirst brimmed in his throat.

"It's okay, Bella and I are going to be great friends."

Jasper didn't hear. He was in a dark tunnel, and the human was at the end of it.

Carlisle cleared his throat. "Sorry, Jasper's our newest vegetarian. It's a little difficult for him."

This, and his wife's eyes trained on him, brought him away from the tunnel's mouth. "…Pleasure to meet you."

"It's okay Jasper, you won't hurt her."

Edward took action. "All right, um, I'm going to take you on a tour of the rest of the house."

"Well, I'll see you soon," said Alice.

"…Okay."

And Edward led the human away.

With her arm linked securely through Jasper's, Alice laughed with Esme and then turned back to her husband, eyes trained on his face, hands turning his body towards her.

He was finally able to meet her gaze, now that the human had vanished.

"I think I'll go down to the basement."

"I'll come with you."

They went down the creaky wooden steps.

"Rosalie's right," he said when they reached the bottom and inhaled the musky scent. "This _is _bad. How could he do this?"

Alice rested her hand on his arm and looked up into his eyes. "You don't usually choose who you fall in love with."

Her love billowed like air beneath the wings of his own emotion, sending him into flight. He could never tell when she would say something utterly wonderful like that. He still doubted himself, though. "I don't know if I'm strong enough."

"But you've already been so strong." She reached up and brushed a stray blonde bang away from his face, then let her hand linger as she traced a scar on his cheek.

He caught her hand and kissed it, murmured, "I don't know." He let her hand fall back to her side. "For a long time, my ideas about good and evil were pretty… out there. I used people regularly--newborns. Taught them to fight, became their comrade, then slaughtered them. No man--and no vampire--was safe from me."

"But you knew it was wrong," Alice said, her eyes round and gentle, innocent, glowing like a halo, "you even stopped feeding."

"I know, and when I found you, the cycle of killing ended, and I began to feel my own emotions again. I'll give you this much--at least with Carlisle's system, I don't have to feel people die." As he said it he could feel it again. He'd grab onto a victim. First mild surprise. Then he sank his teeth into their neck, and shock mixed with extreme terror shot through their body. This intense emotion charged through them chaotically until suddenly it cut off all together. That was the worse part--when the loudest emotional noise he'd ever heard cut in an instant to extreme silence. He'd drop the body and stagger away.

"You see?" Alice brought him back to the present. "That's the difference between good and evil. It's evil to do that to a human--put them through such pain and fear--even if they are weaker than you."

Jasper shrugged. "The way some of your 'classmates' look at you sometimes, I could kill them all."

"I know you could," she laughed, hugging her arms around him tight. "That's why it's lucky they're no competition. You are mine, and nobodies stupid lust can change that." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his jaw--as high as she could get without him leaning in. She smiled, eyes warm.

Then, her eyes changed. Another vision.

Jasper tightened his arms around her back as her hands dropped to her sides. Sometimes when she had these visions she wasn't very stable.

After a moment, her eyes focused on him again, and her hands rested lightly on his chest. "Edward wants to talk to you on the back porch. I guess Bella's gone home."


	4. Edward and Jasper Have a Talk

Edward stood looking out into the woods.

Jasper approached without a sound.

"When you're immortal, what do you live for?" Edward said to the forest.

Alice's face flashed through Jasper's mind.

Edward turned to Jasper. "Love is a good answer… and I've loved before. I've watched the women I love grow old and die as I stayed the same… their final words always bittersweet; an amused farewell, but also a regret."

He let the wind blow for awhile, turning aside his hair here and there as it does to blades of grass. "You know, being able to read thoughts doesn't mean you understand a person." He looked off into the woods again. "I mean, some people are obviously simple and easy to get. But others…" he drifted off in thought, then resumed. "Alice, for example. Her hope and joy are as impressive to me as they are to you. The future

stretches endlessly before her--so why does she care to look?" He left the question hanging in the air, then choose an answer, "Perhaps because the future is the embodiment of her hope." Edward crossed his arms. "This new girl, this… Bella… I can't read her thoughts. But even though she's a bit more simple, a bit more weak, I understand her. And I love her."

Jasper was still silent. He knew Edward got all of the disapproval he felt.

"Thanks for listening."

- -

"It went well, then?" Alice said from the desk in their room, eyes hitting him as soon as he walked in.

Jasper shrugged and stretched out on the bed, facing the ceiling.

"He didn't yell at you… or upset you…" she said.

"He said something nice about you."

Without looking, he felt the smile on her face.

"But I'm not so sure about this human." He sat up. "I mean, I know we've been over this whole 'am I strong enough thing.' It's just, I'm still tempted by humans. All of the time. Yet, Edward talks about past relationships with them. And now this Bella. Am I that much weaker than him?"

"I think the main difference between you and Edward," Alice said, standing up from the desk and walking towards the bed, "is that he hasn't found his soulmate," she finished, putting her arms around his head.

He looked up at her and smiled. "You don't think that he's not just a little bit better looking?" he said, rising and lifting her into his arms as he did so.

"Mmm, not at all," she said, their noses touching, and kissed him.

"And my scars?" he said, his eyes vulnerable as he looked into hers.

"Your scars," she said, looking at a particular one underneath his eye, "this one is my favorite." She kissed it. "I like to think that each scar is a temptation you've resisted, or a year between your birth and our first meeting. I like to think they're medals, like military related or something. You know… it fits with the whole 'Major Whitlock' thing."

"Well, Misses Hale," he said, "I like the way you think."


End file.
